Jenna Dewan Tatum has been known to show off her incredible dance skills on Instagram, and her latest booty-popping Boomerang has people convinced: This looks like a incredibly fun way to work out.

After all, most of us already knew that Dewan Tatum had the moves (quick moment of appreciation for Step Up). "[Dancing] grounds me into my body and makes me feel confident, sexy, and ready to go," Dewan Tatum previously told SELF.

So it's no wonder she can get sweaty with some dance cardio. "This is what a Sunday morning workout with @iamjjdancer looks like," Dewan Tatum wrote on Instagram. And even though they're showing off a fun snippet, her trainer, dancer Jennifer Johnson, added, "this mama works harder in 45 minutes than most do all week."

But contrary to what you might think about dance-based workouts, you aren't required to be a former backup dancer for Janet Jackson (like Dewan Tatum) to get a killer workout from it.

Even for non-dancers, "dance cardio is a really great way to get an effective, full-body workout," explains Jonathan Tylicki, master trainer and on-demand content director for AKT In Motion, an NYC dance cardio hotspot. (Founder Anna Kaiser has trained Shakira, Kelly Ripa, Karlie Kloss, and more with her method.)

As the name suggests, dance cardio is a great way to jack up your heart rate, which is an important part of any fitness routine—it keeps your cardiovascular system healthy and improves endurance Dance cardio also tends to vary your heart rate between songs as the tempo changes, so a super-challenging song might be followed by one that allows you to rest a little more, so you can really break it down the next time around.

What sets it apart from other forms of cardio, like doing sprints on a treadmill or taking an indoor cycling class, is that you're moving in all planes of motion, explains Tylicki. Most cardio, such as running, the elliptical machine, or cycling, is done going forward and backward (the sagittal plane of motion). With dance cardio, you're also moving side to side (the frontal plane) and rotating (the transverse plane).

This mimics how we move in real life, he explains, which can help prevent injury. Moving in different directions also engages your mind, he adds, which keeps it challenging from a mental standpoint, too.

Another potential challenge: Your kid hanging off of you, like Dewan Tatum's daughter in this adorable rehearsal.

As with other cardio methods, how hard you're working is a big factor in the results you see. A great way to test this is with a heart-rate monitor, says Tylicki. "If you are using a heart-rate monitor, you definitely want to be in the 70 to 85 percent of your max heart rate zone for most of [an hour-long] workout," he says. Everyone's max heart varies, but there's a baseline formula to calculate what that means for you: 208 - (0.7 x your age). For a 25-year-old, their max heart rate would be 190, so the 70- to 85-percent range would be 133 to 162 beats per minute. (Here's more about how to calculate your max heart rate.) No heart rate monitor? Aim for an intensity that feels a little challenging and gets you breathing faster and heavier, but that you can still maintain for an extended amount of time.

For reference, this is considered moderate-intensity cardio. Tylicki also suggests pushing closer to 90 percent of your max heart rate for three to five minutes of the workout (say, one song) for a burst of high-intensity work. Granted, going all-out to get your heart pumping can feel impossible when you're standing at the back of your first class, trying to figure out WTF you're supposed to be doing.

This is where the practice comes in—even if you start with zero coordination, it's a learned skill, explains Tylicki. "I say that if you can do a jumping jack to the beat of the music, you can do dance cardio. It's really elevated pedestrian movement," he says. Just like other workout, the more you do it, the better you get, and the harder you can push.

It's also important to actually be using your muscles while you're dancing, says Tylicki. Rather than just throwing yourself around, take a minute to get grounded through your feet, he suggests. When you're engaging your muscles with every mini-squat movement or punch to the music, dance cardio also incorporates strength work. Plus, moving around in different directions forces your body to engage your smaller stabilizing muscles to keep you steady, he says.

"Conquer it one step at a time," says Tylicki. "If you leave a dance cardio class and you conquered one new move, then you've have a successful class."

Most importantly, dance cardio should be fun (and for many people, like Dewan Tatum, it really is). After all, experts have long agreed that the best workout is the one you'll do—and if a high-energy dance workout is more motivating than an hour on a treadmill or elliptical, then go ahead and dance like no one's watching.